Newgarden Spools Up Again
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Dominant
The hour of day at Iowa Speedway was different, but the domination by Josef Newgarden was not since this time he won the Iowa 300. For the fourth time in five years, Newgarden led the most laps in the race at the NTT IndyCar Series’ smallest track. Last year, he led 229 of the 300 laps but settled for a fourth-place finish. This time he went to victory lane by leading 245 laps in Team Penske’s No. 2 Hitachi Chevrolet.
Newgarden capped this victory, his fourth of the season and the 14th of his career, at 2:14 a.m. ET due to a pair of rain delays. The start of the race was delayed four and a half hours due to severe weather, including lightning and heavy rain. The green flag finally waved at 11:45 p.m. ET.
“I’m much happier tonight, I can tell you that,” Newgarden said referring to his qualifying result. “I was really a little bit frustrated yesterday just because I knew we had a pole-winning car. We didn’t put it together. It’s competitive.”
The victory allowed Newgarden to extend his series points lead to 29 over Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi, who finished sixth. Newgarden lapped Rossi on Lap 185, although Rossi battled back to make it interesting for a few laps.
